There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like they were made by accident—like someone tripped over a camera in the dark, caught some footage, and thought, “Well, let’s just splice it together and call it a slasher.” Unhingedfalls firmly into the latter category.
This 1982 “slasher” (and I use the term generously) was banned in Britain as one of the infamous “video nasties,” which, looking back, feels less like censorship and more like the British government doing us all a public service. If this is what the censors were trying to protect audiences from, they deserve a medal. Not because it’s too violent, not because it’s too depraved, but because it’s mind-numbingly dull.
A Car Crash and Then Another (But Slower)
The premise is simple enough: three college girls drive to a music festival, crash their car in the woods, and end up stranded in a creepy mansion. You know the setup: strangers in peril, sinister locals, bad weather, and a killer lurking nearby. In better hands, this formula has produced genuine horror classics. In Unhinged, it produces something closer to a prolonged nap interrupted by the occasional sound of a hatchet.
The car crash that kicks things off is unintentionally hilarious—three women who look like they just stepped out of a Sears catalog are hotboxing their way to Woodstock 20 years too late, when suddenly the car spins, flips, and… everyone survives. They’re rescued by Marion, a local spinster who lives with her bedridden mother and a handyman. It’s here that the movie transforms into the cinematic equivalent of Ambien.
Conversations With Mother (and the Audience’s Patience)
Dinner scenes in Unhinged drag on with the pacing of a hostage negotiation. Marion’s mother sits at the table, rambling in what can only be described as feminist cranky-grandma mode, raving about how men are all monsters and women are better off without them. It’s a theme that could have been compelling if it weren’t delivered with the subtlety of a frying pan to the head.
By the time she finishes, the only real suspense is whether the audience will stay awake. The mother’s tirades don’t come across as unsettling or eerie—they feel like the director forgot to yell “Cut!” and just kept filming until she ran out of breath.
Slashers Need Slashers
A slasher movie lives and dies on its kills. That’s the grim arithmetic of the genre. But Unhinged is stingy even here. There are maybe three or four murders, filmed with all the excitement of someone buttering toast. A hatchet to the head should make you gasp; here it makes you check your watch.
The killer stalks the women in scenes that seem to stretch into eternity. Long tracking shots of hallways, long pauses on doors, long takes of people looking mildly concerned. If tension is supposed to build, it never does. Instead, it evaporates, leaving behind only awkward silence. The “mystery killer” doesn’t even manage to be mysterious—by the halfway point, you’ve probably guessed what’s going on, or at least stopped caring.
Atmosphere Without Air
Now, some critics have praised Unhinged for its “atmosphere.” Let’s talk about that. Yes, it’s set in a gloomy old mansion. Yes, there are rainstorms and candlelight. But atmosphere is not the same as fog machines and underlit staircases. Atmosphere requires mood, dread, or at least some sense that the filmmakers know what they’re doing. Unhingedmistakes slowness for suspense, silence for menace, and bad lighting for artistry.
It’s the kind of movie that plays like a parody of horror but without the self-awareness. Every scene seems to be padded, like the filmmakers were desperately stretching to reach a feature-length runtime. A woman walking upstairs takes as long as a Lord of the Rings battle sequence.
Acting Like You’ve Never Acted Before
The acting, to put it kindly, is community-theater level. Laurel Munson as Terry—the ostensible heroine—wanders through the movie with the energy of someone waiting for a bus. Janet Penner as Marion, the spinster, has moments of genuine creepiness, but those moments are drowned in dialogue that sounds like it was pulled from the world’s worst soap opera.
The mother, Virginia Settle, gives it her all, but the script asks her to play “crazy old misandrist” on repeat until you wish she’d just take a nap. The rest of the cast? Let’s just say nobody was quitting their day jobs after this.
The Big Twist (That’s Not That Big)
The movie builds—or crawls—toward a climactic reveal about Marion. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say the filmmakers wanted their own Psycho moment. What they got was Psycho with the suspense and artistry surgically removed. It’s a twist that might have shocked in 1960, but in 1982 it felt recycled, and in 2025 it feels like a bad drag performance at an open mic night.
Worse, the twist leans into gender dysphoria in a way that feels exploitative, outdated, and offensive rather than daring. What Hitchcock managed with style and psychology, Unhinged delivers with a rubber mask and a shrug.
Video Nasty or Just Nasty Video?
And then there’s the “video nasty” reputation. In the early 1980s, the British censors went on a witch hunt against horror films, banning dozens for their perceived corrupting influence. Unhinged somehow ended up on the list. Watching it now, you wonder if the censors actually watched it or just skimmed the back of the VHS box.
There’s nothing here remotely shocking—unless you count the shock of realizing you wasted 79 minutes of your life. If anything, this movie should have been banned for false advertising: promising terror and delivering tedium.
The Score: A Silver Lining That Tarnishes Quickly
One of the few redeeming qualities is the synthesizer-based score by Jonathan Newton. It hums and drones with an eerie, lo-fi charm that almost convinces you something scary is about to happen. Unfortunately, the score is like the friend who hypes you up to go to a party that turns out to be six guys sitting in a dark living room drinking flat beer. It promises more than the movie ever delivers.
Closing Thoughts: Death by Boredom
In the end, Unhinged is not terrifying, not shocking, not even entertaining in the so-bad-it’s-good sense. It’s just… there. Like an old VHS you find in a thrift store that smells faintly of mildew and regret.
Watching Unhinged feels less like experiencing a horror movie and more like serving jury duty: you didn’t ask for it, you can’t escape it, and when it’s over you wonder if you’re owed some kind of compensation.
Yes, it has its cult defenders, and yes, it holds some academic interest as a footnote in the “video nasty” panic. But as a movie? It’s the cinematic equivalent of soggy toast. Bland, limp, and somehow still unpleasant.
If Unhinged teaches us anything, it’s this: just because you can scrape together $100,000, a creepy mansion, and a fog machine doesn’t mean you should make a horror movie. Sometimes the scariest thing is the idea of sitting through it again.
